IN THE GALLERIES

Older ways of painting get their due in series

November 14, 2008|By Alan G. Artner

Robert Standish: Whatever one thinks of Standish's two series of photographically derived paintings at the Carrie Secrist Gallery, it is nonetheless more than a little unusual to come across a serious artist in his early 40s who seeks to gratify in some of the older ways of painting.

One series involves the human figure; another, light abstractions. The figures, posed or caught candidly, are street people viewed at night. So they're not the kind of subject that often turns up in a portrait, yet they are clearly, unabashedly, shown by the artist -- sometimes on a heroic scale -- to be a part of modern life.

The figures share space with photographically blurred lights and colored signs. Some of these become the basis for pure light abstractions in which color cascades down (or moves across) large panels. The colored shapes in the densest pictures are never quite detached from their street origins, so they reflect back toward the figures -- more successfully, in fact, than the figures are linked to corporate logos.

Standish's use of logos suggests ironic social commentary, as if, say, Nike or Citibank were "sponsors" of his street people. It's an oddity one puts up with for the sake of his dazed, tremulous nocturnal vision.

**1/2 At 835 W. Washington Blvd., through Nov. 29. 312-491-0917.

Tom Van Eynde: The lure of the simple still life remains for photographers with allegiances to the straight, undoctored tradition. In a recent, ongoing series, Van Eynde turned to artificial flowers, posing them in sleek vases against colored backdrops that often darken as they ascend. Seven pieces from the series and a copy of a custom-made book make up a small exhibition at the Linda Warren Gallery

The images are, naturally, conceived in color, which has been heightened by posing one of the bouquets in orange juice and setting another one on fire. Elsewhere, props such as magnifiers and light boxes add to the arrangements without complicating them and underline the sense of each picture being a studio set up.

A lone diptych called "Photography" presents images within images, one completing the other. As shown here, the left panel has a still life in color interrupted by a black-and-white shot that completes it. The right panel reverses the relationship between color and black-and-white. This is very direct, but such are the gratifications of the large archival inkjet prints that the obvious contrivance doesn't register as contrived and the play comes across as more than an exercise.

**1/2 At 1052 W. Fulton Market, through Nov. 29. 312-432-9500.

Karen Lebergott: The artistic use of maps and mapping systems was explored in a number of Chicago exhibitions last season, though few artists employed them more successfully than Lebergott does in her works on paper at Rowland Contemporary. Simpler pieces, as much drawn in graphite as collaged, reveal the grids, aerial views or city plans that apparently underlie all the works. Then more elaborate essays superimpose layer upon layer of painted cutouts that obscure the map association, at times transforming the surfaces into abstract creations.

Each part of the overlay is less a sheet than an irregular, spindly template that the artist has brightly painted around the irregular geometric figures she has cut. So we not only look at the surface but also into it, through several layers that also have been painted and irregularly cut. Sometimes, too, individual sections buckle or peel away from others, putting "air" between the layers that allows us further penetration. Sorting all this out, especially on the largest piece that cascades from wall to floor, is a most satisfying visual experience.

But, of course, these days the visual is not enough. So there is an attempt to add more far-reaching conceptual baggage, and it seems grafted on rather than arising naturally.

**1/2 At 1118 W. Fulton Market, through Dec. 13. 312-421-6275.

Amy Mayfield: Time was when many young artists went through a "decadent" phase inspired by the writings of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Isidore Ducasse. Now, in our post-literate world, the sources are different, but the phase still is part of delayed adolescence, as may be seen from Mayfield's exhibition of collages, paintings and environments at threewalls gallery.

The chief components in her two-dimensional works are a stringy, fuzzy line that stretches from Aubrey Beardsley illustrations to the early Neo-Expressionism of Rick Prol and the dense geometric patterning found in the paintings of Russian modernist Pavel Filonov as well as quilts. They come together willy-nilly in compositions the artist calls "subliminal landscapes," which generally are dark in color, thick in poured paint and "scary" in the manner of fantasy films by director Guillermo Del Toro.

This sensibility spills over into environments in which walls and floor have geometric patterning and the objects include (in addition to collages and paintings) found kitsch, stacks of books and mounds resembling melted wax. It's all heedless, jokey-cute and way too easy.